Page 58 of Experimental Voyage
The three survivors, younger animals as far as I could tell, would have a long road ahead of them, but they qualified for removal from the planet. As promised, I handled the paperwork for all the living animals we were taking with us, including all photography of the beasts, registration, and claims of ownership.
The little rodents the Veloc had first found suffered a similar fate to the tree cats, although four survived, adding to my mountain of paperwork.
Once Viva thought she could handle the Veloc, she went out to give them the bad news, which triggered another wave of keening.
Delta glared out the opened cargo bay door at the ruckus. “We’re going to end up back on this wretched planet yearly plucking off dying animals, treating them, and carting them to one of the Veloc worlds. This is all your fault, Camellia.”
As I couldn’t dispute that, I sighed. “Would it help if I volunteered to come back to this wretched planet with you?”
“Do you actually think Waldren is at all going to be okay with sending you to this hellhole?”
I stared at my fellowhomo sapiens, and I raised a brow. “Does he think he can actually stop me?”
“He’s certainly going to try.”
“He can hover in orbit on his own ship and complain bitterly over my cruel mistreatment of his person. I can’t get an entire herd of death horses if he even thinks of trying to bar me from coming back to rescue more of them.” While I disliked the planet’s hazards, I wanted to see the animals thrive. They wouldn’t be thriving on the world, not with the fungus eating away at them. “And you’re sure we can purge the ship of the fungus?”
“We will be able to purge the ship, ourselves, and the animals of the fungus,” Delta confirmed. “We’ll be in quarantine for a few days longer than expected, but we can handle the quarantine in orbit over the school. You should be back in plenty of time for your classes.”
“Is there anything else we should be doing here?”
“Outside of going through the colony ship to check for anything important, no. We’ve gotten what we came for. We just acquired it in a slightly unexpected fashion.”
“That’s quite the understatement. We went in planning to take carcasses. Instead, we’re hauling live bodies.”
“Just think about it this way. Waldren will understand once he finds out we rescued a bunch of animals. He’s just going to have to deal with his trauma. And that’s been a long time coming, so don’t let it bother you. You conquered your demons, and now it’s time he conquered his.”
NINETEEN
Delta’s eyes widened. “Can you please take us back to space?”
Somehow,we managed to pluck ten death horses from the planet. The original mare and stallion we’d treated at the failed colony would go home with me. The other eight would be prizes for the Veloc clan that won the right to adopt me. I also became the owner of six tree cats, all kittens from different islands that would have otherwise been doomed to long and painful deaths. With one male and five females, I would be rolling in tree cats within two or three years, and after the first litter was born, I would swap males with Delta, who had gotten a pair from two more islands.
Tree cats didn’t handle the fungus well, and once they were over a year old, death was a guarantee, much like it was in humans.
The Veloc had acquired a bunch of the tree cats as well, and I doubted we’d see much of either, as they were determined to domesticate their new pets in record time.
Fortunately for our sanity, the tree cats learned the concept of litter boxes with admirable speed. Mine all shared a cage inmy quarters, and I doubted my domestication efforts would go all that well. Unlike Palta, the small spotted cats viewed me as an interesting enough creature capable of bringing them food. Beyond that, they cared nothing for me, and they were not thrilled to be petted, not like the Andean mountain cat.
Maybe one day, I would tame them and teach them how to be good companions. If it didn’t work out, I would help the Veloc find a suitable planet for them, one where they could thrive without some damned fungus eating away at them.
Due to the fragile nature of our cargo, Viva opted to take a slightly longer route to reach Cremora Delta, reducing the number of gates used to one. Like the gate at Melody, it had a mind of its own, and Viva spent an hour having a discussion with the shiftgems before committing to the jump.
Unlike every other jump we’d done, Viva didn’t approach it at speed. Instead, she eased the ship into position, sat tense in her chair, and activated the engines.
Rather than the harsh lurch I expected from a jump, the ship rocked, as gentle as a mother soothing her baby. Out of the window, Cremora Delta waited.
I recognized the spaceport and surrounding terrain far below.
“That worked far better than I thought it would,” Viva admitted, and she fiddled with her controls before activating the comm and having a chat with the planet’s traffic controllers, informing them of our quarantine precautions, cleaning efforts of the ship, and that we had sick wildlife on board that would need treatments.
She was directed to land the ship on the landing pad on the skirt of the spaceport, given instructions to wait while her vessel underwent external treatments. We would all be treated for the fungus yet again, the ship would be fumigated, and we’d be put through another round of quarantine. Once Viva acknowledgedher instructions, she eased the ship into the atmosphere, opting to glide through the air to make the entry as gentle as possible.
“Delta thought I was crazy to invest in the shuttle system for this. It’s a racer, not my main ship. Right now, the shuttle system is why we aren’t plastered to our seats and cursing over a rough reentry.”
The man in question sighed. “All right, all right. You were right. The shuttle system was, in fact, a mandatory acquisition. I’m still trying to figure out how you got that shiftgem gate to cooperate.”
“I asked it really nicely, told it about all the poor animals needing tender, loving care on this world, and basically begged for it to limit their trauma as much as possible.” Viva chuckled, shook her head, and pointed at the landing pad. “You’re going to have an entourage again. I bet your daddy and mommy are gonna meet us and get angry they can’t join us in quarantine.”
